White Balance

Well, of course we'll start off with "What is white balance?" If you walk out on a bright sunny day and someone hands you a piece of printer paper, it looks white. Later if you are sitting on your couch and the lamp next to you has a 60w bulb in it and you are handed the same piece of paper it will still look white. What your camera notices is that the paper looks a lot bluer outside and very red/yellow under the 60w bulb, under florescent lights it looks much greener. Your brain is so used to these color changes that it compensates for the color differences and the paper usually looks just as white in all the different lights. The White Balance in your camera must be adjusted to compensate for these differences in light color. Most cameras are set on Automatic White Balance and like most other camera computer controlled operations it works very well. But like exposure, automatic is not necessarily "correct" and correct is not necessarily what I want. Your camera will let you set the white balance to the type of light: sunlight; cloudy, shade, incandescent, fluorescent, open shade. Many

cameras will allow you to set the preferred "color temperature". I don't want to get to deep into that subject but briefly: color temperature is measured in Degrees Kelvin. Daylight with the sun shining is usually about 5500°K, that reddish/yellowish 60w bulb more like 2500°K, and open shade about 10,000°K, or the lower the temperature the redder the light and the higher the temperature the bluer the light.

Take a photo on a cloudy day with your camera set to Automatic White Balance, then reset the camera to Cloudy and compare the two images. Usually the shot set to Cloudy will be redder than the other. Just to add confusion here artists refer to redder light as being "warmer" and bluish light as being "cooler", the opposite of color temperature numbers which go down for red and up for blue. This means that when you set your camera to Cloudy and the image looks a little redder we say that the image in "warmer". Photos of light skinned people usually benefit from a little added warmth, the skin just looks healthier than the sometimes bluish color of photos taken in the shade. Anytime you are not pleased with the color of the image you see on your LCD try setting the white

balance to match the light you are shooting in. Also try setting the white balance to the WRONG setting to see what happens. If I set my white balance to Incandescent and take photos on a sunny day the photos will  be very blue. Now if you use Exposure Compensation and set the exposure to say -2 the photo could look like it was taken by moonlight.

The photo here (Granddaughter Saylor) was taken in the shade during the day. The color temperature was probably about 6500°K but the camera calculated 4300style="background-color: white;">°K and the photo at the top was created. It's not bad but is a little on the cool side. Since the photo was taken in the camera's RAW mode the color balance is actually set in the computer not in the camera so I was able to change it. In the second I set the color temp to 6500°K or, the approximate temperature of open shade and created the second version which is much warmer (that's redder) and a more attractive skin tone. Just to fill out the group I set the color temp to 2850°K or a middle tungsten light and the image is a very cool blue.

I will get back to RAW in a later post but if your shooting jpegs (most people and a lot of pros do) remember to check the color and set the white balance to the type of light you are actually shooting in. You may be much happier with your photos.